First Steps in Shutdown of Long Island College Hospital Are Approved

The State Health Department approved key steps on Friday to close Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn, ending admissions from its emergency room and all elective surgeries by noon on Monday. All patients are to be discharged on or before July 28, and the emergency room is to close July 29.

After months of community protest and a legal stalemate between SUNY Downstate Medical Center, which wants to close the hospital, and unions representing hospital workers, who are fighting to keep it open, the state’s approval of the first steps in a closing plan signaled the end of the line for the 155-year-old institution.

Robert Bellafiore, a spokesman for SUNY Downstate, which took over the failing hospital in 2011 and lacks independent authority to close it, would not comment.

SUNY Downstate still faces a court hearing on Aug. 7 on whether it should be held in contempt of court for allegedly violating a temporary restraining order halting preparations to close the hospital. That temporary restraining order is currently suspended, because the matter is on appeal.

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“The governor, the mayor and state officials are allowing SUNY to gamble with people’s lives here,” she said, citing jammed emergency rooms at other hospitals in northern Brooklyn.

Scores of doctors and nurses remain on duty around the clock in the nearly empty hospital at a cost of $3 million per week. Wards meant to house 375 patients now have no more than 18.

The staffing may last through the summer; doctors have not yet been given the 30-day notice of termination required by law, and a warning notice to nurses was recently extended to Aug. 14, meaning that layoffs cannot be announced until after that date.

“I don’t want to say it’s the end of the road, because SUNY has put out an R.F.P. for other operators,” Ms. Furillo said, referring to a request for proposal.

But she and other union officials have long contended that SUNY Downstate is not interested in finding a hospital operator, and instead wants to sell the buildings, some with views of the Statue of Liberty, for lucrative real estate development.

A version of this article appears in print on July 20, 2013, on Page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: First Steps In Shutdown Of a Hospital Are Approved. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe